A Too-Hasty Math Move
Mathematics is generally regarded as the most pristine of academic disciplines, unsullied by human struggles and possessing, as philosopher Bertrand Russell put it, “not only truth, but supreme beauty.”
In the Los Angeles Unified School District, however, mathematics has become something distinctly different: the focus of raging debate. At issue is the district’s decision to replace traditional math with “integrated math,” a new curriculum that downplays rote memorization in favor of problem solving. Drills aimed at learning multiplication tables would be replaced by math games and other exercises designed to help students deduce math concepts through everyday experience.
District officials say the change is its last best hope of reversing 15 years of declining scores in math tests. But in a series of community forums and school board meetings, a coalition of parents and math professors calling itself Mathematically Correct has rightly faulted the district for its swift embrace of an unproven teaching method. The LAUSD began phasing in integrated math three years ago, now teaches the program to more than half its students and plans to implement it districtwide within five years.
That’s a pretty heavy plan for a teaching method that even the district admits is untested. It would be more sensible to expand the program where parents ask for it or once evidence of its superiority over traditional math is clear. Mathematically Correct and the Wilson administration have called on the district to incorporate the state’s recently implemented traditional math standards into its integrated math curricula instead, and the district should accede to the request.
The integrated curriculum is worded in sweeping terms that allow its supporters to claim that it already incorporates the state’s tough new math standards. LAUSD Supt. Ruben Zacarias, for instance, sent a memo to school board members in June arguing that while the curriculum never asks students to learn or prove the Pythagorean theorem it “aligns well” with that requirement by asking students to “analyze and represent solutions using geometric relationships.” But these two requirements are not the same. Geometric relationships are everyday phenomena, while the Pythagorean theorem is a magnificent idea that helped give rise to Euclidean geometry.
Ideally, skilled math teachers can use the creative elements of integrated math curricula to explain profound principles of geometric relationships and other seemingly prosaic phenomena. But for the large proportion of California public school math teachers who did not study the subject in college, traditional book- and drill-based math lessons are often easier to teach. The state Senate can help solve the underlying problem by passing a bill by Assemblyman Ted Lempert (D-San Carlos) that would establish a program for awarding grants to help K-12 public school teachers in California improve their math teaching skills.
In the meantime, the district should regard integrated math not as an alternative to studying the concepts at the core of traditional math but rather as another way of helping students grasp what Russell called their truth and beauty.
